


Tarzan of the Pine Sap

by Porkchop_Sandwiches



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M, Post-El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29023740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Porkchop_Sandwiches/pseuds/Porkchop_Sandwiches
Summary: Jesse didn’t know exactly when he became like fucking Christmas Tarzan. But there was no use trying to deny it. ‘Cause everything in his house that didn’t smell like dog hair or grain-free banana bread, was basically infused with the scent of pine needles.The woods had moved in with him too apparently.
Relationships: Jesse Pinkman/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Tarzan of the Pine Sap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizwontcry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizwontcry/gifts).



> Warning for mention of past-non-con but it's not explicit. 
> 
> This was written for a Blue Christmeth prompt but I don't know how to use this site well enough to post a second story under the collection lol. It's for the prompt: "Jesse's life in Alaska 5 or 10 years after he escapes from the compound. What is he doing? *How* is he doing?"...and I really ran with it. This is sappy. Beware.

Jesse didn’t know exactly when he became like fucking Christmas Tarzan. But there was no use trying to deny it. ‘Cause everything in his house that didn’t smell like dog hair or grain-free banana bread, was basically infused with the scent of pine needles. 

The woods had moved in with him too apparently.

He sipped his mug of French press coffee with just a splash of coconut milk while he stood in a forest of lights in his otherwise dark living room, and counted five. Yeah, he had  _ five  _ fucking Christmas trees. 

But like one was only two feet tall, for Wendy of course. The other four were taller than him. They were decked out in all the new glittery shit he’d bought this year; one of them was more sparkly than the others.

And if he had to sit down and write it out or whatever, he guessed this whole thing started his first winter in Alaska. 

It was winter when Ed had dropped him off. There was no gradual easing in period or nothing going from desert heat to below freezing. Just the dead of fucking winter balls-deep inside of Jesse. He’d had a head cold or the FLU or some shit for at least three weeks.

Once he had come out of the fog of hacking his lungs out and blowing his nose every three seconds, he’d realized it was Christmas Eve. 

It was also almost nine o’ clock. He had already gone into town a couple of times to buy groceries and furniture and stuff ‘cause this was a small-ass town and nobody was watching New Mexico local news, and Ed had told him it was okay.

Still, Jesse avoided leaving his nice, little yellow house with the tin roof and wrap-around porch whenever he could. 

Not having a Christmas tree on Christmas seemed like as good of a reason as any to bundle himself up in enough layers to be totally unrecognizable as like a human fucking being. He jumped in his used Toyota pickup and managed to get to the lot right before closing. 

All they had left was a couple of scrawny, Charlie-Brown types. He gave the bored high school kid working the lot two twenties anyway, and threw the tree in the truck bed.

It wasn’t until he was home with the wood-stove going that he realized he didn’t have any decorations or even a goddamn tree stand.

So, he propped it up against the wall across from his second-hand camo-green couch. He used a handful of some empty aluminum Pop-Tart wrappers and Funyun bags to shred up for tinsel. Some Cheetos and part of a spool of string that he wasn’t using to line-dry his clothes were like substitutes for a popcorn garland ‘cause he wasn’t really a popcorn guy. He made Pete’s beanie the topper.

Giving it a second look, it seemed more like a fucking shrine of his shitty life in Albuquerque than a fucking Christmas tree. 

And maybe he took more than a little enjoyment out of tearing that shit apart in his backyard that night because seeing it made him sick. He didn’t have much of a backyard, just a small patch of grass. But that was ‘cause as soon as the snowy grass ended, a whole fucking forest started. His own like private acre or so of woods. 

Picking up the pieces of his garbage-bitch Christmas tree, he felt dumb for going out and paying for this shit when there were free pine trees literally all around him. Jesse had put a pin in that for the next year. He also made a note to stop thinking in that asshole’s words or whatever.

And on his one-year anniversary of moving to Alaska, he chopped down a huge motherfucker he’d had his eyes on since the first frost that barely fit in his front door. It had been perfect. Until  _ somebody  _ had drank the bitch dry when Jesse was at work.

“Shh,” Jesse said. 

He set his coffee down on one of the newest end tables he’d made. This one wasn't going up on his Etsy shop ‘cause he liked it too much. He scratched behind Wendy’s spotted brown ears. She was whining a little but in a happy way, like she knew today was Christmas and wanted to get things going already.

“It’s like four in the morning. People are sleeping. We still got to wait a little.”

Jesse swore she had been able to understand him the second he adopted her from the pound over two years ago. Bill, this middle-aged dude who worked at the mom-and-pop version of Home Depot where Jesse was doing stocking shit, had just rescued two cats and had casually suggested that Jesse get a dog. 

He didn’t know why, but once the idea was in his head, he’d straight up ditched his ham sandwich in the break room fridge and had Bill cover the rest of his shift so he could drive to the pound. He’d helped the guy out before when he’d needed to pick up his son from school or wanted to catch some real important hockey game. He’d owed Jesse. And Jesse felt like he had cashed in his favor and then some when he locked eyes with the most mangy-looking mutt he’d ever seen. Her white and brown fur looked like a dirty popcorn ceiling. She was at least seven years old according to the lady working there and had most likely come from an abusive home. While she was for sure a mutt, she also had a lot of pit bull or boxer in her: one of those breeds with the squished-up faces that couldn’t breathe real well. 

Jesse had noticed that when he gave Wendy her first bath in the old clawfoot tub he was starting to dig taking bubble baths in like once a week. She sounded like a fat kid running the mile in gym class, snorting in and out. But Jesse liked it. 

He wanted to hear someone else breathing.

It had been so fucking silent at night underneath those fucking bars, and then in his house. 

And while no amount of cleaning or soaps or even eco-friendly bubble bath-- ‘cause yeah, he  _ had  _ taken a bubble bath with his dog just once—covered up her stink, and her bottom teeth poked out over her top lip, and she was loud, Jesse still loved her. Even when she had chewed up two pairs of his work boots and pissed in the kitchen a few times.

But after working too many double-shifts to count while the store geared up for the holidays, Jesse realized Wendy had lapped up all the water and his perfect Christmas tree was as dried up and dead as Heisenberg. 

He had sort of gone off.

He’d ripped the fucker straight from his tree stand and butchered it with a hatchet and who knows what other tools he had in his new woodworking wood-shop in the back. And Wendy had the decency to look sorry about it with her tail literally tucked between her legs and her head drooped low. Jesse had been shaking and maybe crying at that point, all slumped against the side of the house with his clothes drenched in snow. He really hadn’t wanted another shitty Christmas Eve.

But unlike so many other people in Jesse’s old life, Wendy seemed like she wanted to genuinely make it up to him in a way that was totally selfless. She didn’t wake him up at the crack of dawn the next day for her breakfast. Not even one bark came out of her the next time the mailman swung by. And she was even more gentle than normal during his usual middle of the week panic attack. She’d set her big, floppy, drooling face on Jesse’s chest while he laid down on the section of the rug in the living room warmed by the wood-stove. He was sobbing and hyperventilating and hugging the shit out of this dog. 

And he felt like he had a better understanding of people he’d met in NA back in his old life who were depressed. ‘Cause you could be depressed no matter how great your life was. Or you could have some serious anxiety stuff too even in the best of circumstances. 

Not that his shit was anywhere near perfect at that point. He had a job though. He’d managed to stay sober even over that shaky time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve for a second year. He was making little stuff like birdhouses and cigar boxes for fun with the workshop that had taken him most of the spring to build. There was even this girl he’d met at work: Lorae. 

Wendy pawed at Jesse’s leg, claws scratching him through his red and green argyle pajama pants ‘cause fuck it if he didn’t like to get a little festive with his sleepwear on Christmas. He figured he should check on her water bowl while he topped off his coffee. 

Not bothering turning on any lights until he made it to the kitchen, he got her some fresh water and even dropped a few homemade, sweet-potato-based dog treats in her dish shaped like a Jack o’ lantern.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

She licked up every single crumb until Jesse could see the triangle eyes and nose of the pumpkin face looking back at him.

It had been a week before Halloween two years ago when he first saw Lorae in the store with an armful of lights and spooky lawn-ornament shit. She had dark blonde hair, skinny, looked kind of mousy, but in like a pretty way. 

Jesse had hardly looked at the chicks who tried to flirt with him or whatever in the aisles while he was shelving shit. 

He’d caught her looking at him. She shopped there for light bulbs and curtain rods and other random shit at least once or twice a week. But she never talked to him. Ever.

It was weeks later, after the first frost, when he was already dreaming about that perfect pine just on the front edge of his property that he decided to say something to her. She was wearing a sparkly purple jacket that seemed too thin for the weather, pink boots that were probably more for fashion than function, and she looked like she was struggling over which Duraflame log to buy.

“You can’t cook over those,” he’d said.

Lorae had sort of twitched all over, like a small nose on a bunny. “What?”

“You can’t cook with wood like that. Or like roast marshmallows.” He had his arms loaded down with a box of out-of-season discount-shit like garden spades that he needed to mark down. “The chemicals in those logs would give you like...cancer or some shit. I’m not...trying to be sexist or anything. Just wanted to give you like a heads up or whatever.”

“Thanks,” she had said. And she smiled too, a small one. But fuck if Jesse didn’t feel like he was a twelve-year-old and all fluttery and shit. “I was going to roast chestnuts, so no offense taken. I haven’t lived here long. I usually just roast chestnuts in the oven, but I’ve never had a fireplace before.”

“Where are you from?”

“Texas,” she’d said.

“ _ Oh _ , you don’t sound like it.” 

He’d figured that was a stupid thing to say, but it was true. She didn’t have a Southern accent at all. And her voice was higher than he’d expected for someone who basically never smiled back at him if they made brief eye contact or never chatted about the weather when she was in the store like the locals did. It didn’t seem like a mean thing, more of a scared lone-wolf-type deal. Jesse could totally relate.

She’d chuckled. “Us folks from Dallas aren’t as ‘cowboy’ as the ones out in the sticks and farms. Though I can’t really talk since I spent most of my life on my dad’s ranch. He...passed away recently.”

“I’m sorry,” Jesse had said. 

He sat the box down and tried to come up with anything less fucking generic than that. It had been a long time since he’d actually  _ wanted  _ to keep a conversation going with somebody. He was pretty rusty.

“Don’t be. He was sort of an addict,” she’d said. Her face got kind of tense like she was going to cry, but she shook it off. “He wasn’t sort of an addict; he was one. He’d been one for a long time. Even at seventy he thought he was still a rock star. He used to be a roadie for Guns N' Roses.”

“Yo, that’s so cool!” Jesse had almost wanted to laugh at how much they both looked a little embarrassed about what they’d just said. She didn’t seem the bragging type and Jesse tried not to drop the Y-word around the small-town folks of Alaska. People were whiter than the snow around these parts. He’d coughed. “I mean, I used to listen to them in high school. Killer songs. I used to be able to play ‘Don’t Cry’ on the drums.”

She’d smiled again. “That’s still one of my favorite songs.”

“Did you ever get to go to any of their shows?”

“When I was little, I went to a bunch. My dad’s using got in the way of that though. Sorry, I kind of need to get to the post office before it closes. I have a lot of stuff for my Etsy shop to ship out. Do you have any regular wood?”

Jesse had no idea what an Etsy shop was, but he knew they were out of firewood. And he knew he wanted to talk to her again. 

“We’re all sold out. But uh...if you come back tomorrow, I could totally get you some from my own stash.” Jesse had regretted wording it like that, but he figured old habits dying hard wasn’t just a cliché or whatever. “I mean I have a lot of wood at home for fires and like wood-project shit too.”

“Are you sure?” she’d said. 

And when he’d reassured her, she told him she’d be back in at around seven the next night. 

Jesse hadn’t even told her that he got off at seven. And it had been a Friday, and the middle school was doing this charity-raising holiday event in the parking lot with Santa and caroling and a food truck.  _ And  _ it just so happened that she took him up on his offer to buy her some apple cider since she was something called Paleo and couldn’t have the dairy in hot coco, and that led them into talking more and strolling around the rinky-dink light displays. It was like the planets were aligning for Jesse or some shit. 

Lorae had explained to him what Etsy was all about, how she had this online store called ‘Going Bananas’ where she made baked goods for people who were lactose intolerant and didn’t like eating normal breads. Banana bread made from almond flour was her best seller.

“Yo, I didn’t know you could make cookies and brownies out of nut flours. I didn’t even know nut flours were a thing. Do they call them nut flours? It sounds sort of dirty now that I've said it like five times.”

He’d made her laugh hard enough to tear up. They’d stopped walking to watch a line of kids wait to talk to Santa.

“Do you mind if I use that in my blog? I have a food blog too. Sometimes I write short stories and poetry and that kind of crap. Didn’t you say you did woodworking? What kind of things do you like to make?”

No one had ever asked about Jesse’s hobby. But she was totally into it. They had ended up talking long enough for the Christmas fair to end, and they ended up in Jesse’s truck laughing and listening to a used Guns N' Roses cassette he’d bought from the same thrift store he’d found his couch. 

She told him she’d moved to Alaska because it was the most opposite place she could think of to Texas. She’d also said she had this stuck-up cousin, Courtney, who thought she wouldn’t be able to work up the nerve to go through with it after spending her whole life in Dallas and most of it with her dad. It had been satisfying to prove that chick wrong, but she admitted that she was pretty lonely. 

She went back to Dallas for the holidays. But once she got back, they started spending almost four or five days a week together. 

Jesse still couldn’t believe it had taken his slow ass five more months to like properly ask her out and another four to kiss her for the first time. 

Turning on the toaster oven, Jesse clearly remembered that night when he’d dropped her off at her place, which was a studio apartment in a shabby-looking complex on the outskirts of town. 

It was already early September at that point, real close to Jesse’s birthday but not John’s: his new, permanent identity. John was born on June 10 th and Lorae had baked him a loaf of her famous banana bread with extra walnuts like she knew he liked it along with the best veggie lasagna he’d ever had. He’d already sold two coffee tables and a nightstand on his own Etsy shop with her help. She’d also been a huge influence in him finding an NA group one town over, and he was still going to meetings twice a week. 

Jesse unwrapped the cling wrap from a brand-new batch of cinnamon-banana muffins on his kitchen counter and almost felt like blushing when he thought about how nervous he’d been dropping her off that night. 

They’d just seen this kids movie called _ ParaNorman _ , which was kind of weird with them being two grown-ass adults, and she was actually already thirty-two he’d found out. But she really liked Halloween and the movie was one of those stop-motion deals about zombies. She’d said she was kind of a nerd growing up ‘cause of how her parents were. Her mom was an addict like her dad had been, and her parents had met ‘cause she’d been a Guns N' Roses groupie. She’d overdosed on heroin when Lorae was just eleven. It had really freaked her out, made her want to be the exact opposite of them. She didn’t go to parties or date much or anything. Kids in high school had called her ‘Church Mouse’ even though she wasn’t even religious. 

But that had been part of the reason he was being so goddamn slow about physical stuff. 

He was also being totally chicken shit over the idea of getting close to someone again.

But for whatever reason that night he’d leaned over the gear shift and kissed her. No real warning or anything. And she seemed startled at first, skittish, and pulled back. 

They’d looked at each other for a few seconds before she kissed him back with a light hand on the side of his face. The like delicate feel of her little fingers on his cheek had given him fucking goose bumps. And he’d smiled the entire drive home.

Then she didn’t call him for days. 

Jesse felt sick to his stomach and had maybe three anxiety attacks and called out from work twice. He was sullen and quiet at his NA meetings that week, though no one pushed him too much. 

But it turned out she had just bought a new phone and she was back in Texas because her cousin Courtney was getting married and she wanted Lorae to do all of the baking. Her cousin had two other friends from her sorority getting married back-to-back after that, so she actually paid for Lorae to stay in Texas for a long-ass time. 

They didn’t even get to celebrate Halloween together like he’d hoped. She’d at least called him that night during her cousin’s party. Lorae had told him she had to sneak out to the driveway. She sounded drunk even though she’d never had more than half a glass of red wine around him ‘cause she’d told him she didn’t like feeling out of control. 

But that night they’d been pouring her shots of Fireball, saying she was too “uptight.” Jesse had thought that was pretty fucked up ‘cause like everybody knew how much she dug cinnamon shit, and it seemed like Courtney and her friends had used that  _ and  _ called her names. But, Lorae didn’t sound offended, really giggly actually. She’d told him she missed him. She said she thought he was hot and how she was mad at herself for never telling him before. 

He was pretty sure he’d contributed something brilliant like, “Oh yeah?”

“Courtney thinks I’m...I’m a total ‘goody-goody little bitch,’ I think were her words. She even told her friends while we were playing beer pong that she thought I’d never even masturbated before.  _ Pssh _ . I do it all the time.” She hiccupped. “I...like...I like to think about you when I masturbate. Sometimes I want to touch you like that; want you to touch me like that so bad it hurts.”

Jesse had almost dropped his cellphone in a pile of wood shavings. He’d been working on a bread box for her as a Christmas present out in his shop. 

She’d literally been the first person he’d thought about while jerking off since before the compound, back when she’d still just been a customer to him, and he kind of wanted to tell her that. Hell, he wanted to drive straight to Dallas and fuck her right out in Courtney’s driveway. 

But the line got loud and she’d said she had to go. 

It was crazy or maybe _ he _ was just going crazy or whatever, but the string of baby showers and birthday parties and bridal showers that her cousin wanted her to stay in town for didn’t dry up until late November. Then she had a ton of work to get caught up on for her Etsy shop, and the hardware store was going gangbusters around the holidays.

They’d had like two short lunch dates before he’d invited her over for Christmas Eve. He had two trees at that point: one for him and a miniature one for Wendy. Lorae hadn’t thought it was weird. And while she’d been to his place before, she hadn’t since before she’d gone to Dallas, not since before they’d kissed. 

Jesse threw Wendy another dog treat, and washed his hands before he slid two thick cinnamon-banana muffins with extra walnuts in the toaster oven. 

Glancing at his hands as he set the timer for fifteen minutes, he remembered how tightly she’d grabbed onto them when they’d had sex that night. 

They had been in his bed with him on top. 

Before that, they’d kissed for a little while in the living room. Then she sort of like gingerly palmed him through his jeans. He’d jolted, and they’d both laughed. And  _ fuck _ as soon as she started rubbing him at all, things sort of like escalated quickly.

He hadn’t been laid in over two years and he sort of went savage. 

When he had been picturing it for maybe the whole previous year, he had wanted things to be more romantic and slower: tugging off one of those cute sweaters she was always wearing, getting her all worked up with lots of foreplay, and just like totally devouring her pussy. But he’d decided to skip all of that in a horny blur. 

He’d really fucked her hard. And it had in the moment been so damn sexy for some reason that she’d held his hands the whole time. 

And the ‘whole time’ had been a big fat thirty seconds  _ maybe,  _ before he blew his load in the condom.

He remembered rolling over, catching his breath and saying some dumb shit like, “ _ Wow _ , that...that was...that was bad.”

Lorae had pulled the sheets over her breasts. “Sorry.”

“No,  _ no _ ,” Jesse had said. “I mean  _ I  _ was bad. Real bad. You were great. I usually last longer. I’m sorry.”

She’d shrugged. “Don’t worry. It...it was nice. I wouldn’t know any different anyways.”

Jesse had raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She got up and started getting dressed in a hurry. “Nothing.”

“You’re not sleeping over? Tomorrow’s Christmas,” he’d said. He had sat up in bed and leaned over to touch her arm or something when he saw just a tiny bit of blood on the sheets. And it suddenly made sense. “Yo, was that...was that your first time?”

“It’s no big deal,” Lorae had said. She was pulling her jeans up and just barely winced. 

“Did I hurt you?” 

The feeling of her small hand clutching onto his, her nails digging in, wasn’t nice anymore. It only reminded him of the sting of getting punched over and over and over again with a set of brass knuckles.

He’d been surprised he didn’t see his palm split open like his cheekbone had, or maybe see his fingers redden and swell like that asshole’s had. He’d felt like he was going to be sick. He’d never wanted to hurt anyone again.

“No. Yes. Well, just a little bit or whatever. It’s not your fault. I'm the freak thirty-two-year-old virgin. Or I was. I’m not a prude or anything. I just didn’t get around to it being three-hundred pounds in high school and then online college. Taking care of my dad all the time. Social anxiety. I’m just...I think I need to like take a shower and sleep in my own bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Jesse wasn’t able to do much more than blink like a damn idiot as she waved to him and left. He’d been so focused on keeping his own identity and past a secret, that it wasn’t until then that he realized he’d never seen old pictures of her. He’d obviously never met any of her family. And he sure as shit didn’t know she was a virgin. This should have been a totally nice, special moment for her, and probably with anyone else  _ but  _ him. 

He hadn’t been trying to think about it, but the memory seemed to constrict and tighten around him like the chains that had scarred him all over: Jack buckling his belt and kicking the back of his bare leg. “Stop crying. Ain’t like you’ve never ripped open a cherry or two in your time.” Voices laughing. 

Something seemed to boil up and over inside of him. 

He had been so fucking furious with himself that he couldn’t see straight. 

It was like he blacked out and didn’t come-to again until he was in a pile of broken Christmas trees with Wendy’s head perched on his knee. 

He’d fucked up his third Christmas Eve in a row.

“Not this year,” he said to Wendy.

Wendy may or may not have been on her fifth dog treat at this point, but they were organic and low sugar and shit. Plus, it was Christmas for goodness sake. Jesse softly laughed at himself and checked the time on the microwave. It was only a little after five and still pitch black out. Too early to start playing any Christmas music.

Last year after his blow up, he’d used Christmas music on his iPod to get his spirits back up as he chopped down three more trees and salvaged enough bulbs and lights to pretty much go around. One tree was for him, one for Wendy, and the last he put extra purple tinsel on for Lorae.

He hadn’t been sure she’d even come over for presents and breakfast like they’d planned, but she had. 

Without making it too awkward, they’d talked shit over and Jesse had maybe apologized a few dozen times. 

And maybe he’d eaten more than her cinnamon buns that morning. 

‘Cause it turned out she hadn’t done that before either. Shit, he’d practically spent all of Christmas going down on her. He felt rusty. But from the soft, quiet way she was moaning, he could tell she was really into it. 

She’d returned the favor, and even though she didn’t know what she was doing, he came like about as soon as her mouth was on him. He’d guessed that’s what happened when you hadn’t been blown in forever. 

And fuck it if they didn’t make quite a pair in the bedroom: with him maybe a little...damaged or whatever after everything, and with her not experiencing like anything until she was an adult.

Honestly, Jesse totally reaped the benefits. ‘Cause her bar for shit was real low. It was like she thought he’d invented eating pussy or something. And that constant-sex period of a new relationship that usually lasted a couple of weeks or so had been more like beautiful months on end. They’d made love all over his fucking house. 

Sometime this past spring when there was still a few inches of snow on the ground, they were taking one of their bubble baths together. He remembered it being a Friday ‘cause her week had been particularly shitty with FedEx fucking up a ton of her customer’s orders, and she was working her way up to an actual full glass of red wine. During the rare times she did drink, she’d always ask him if it was cool. He’d always said it was fine. The smell of wine did like nothing for him anyway.

But, he’d been sitting between her legs in the sudsy bath, laughing at the feeling of her hiccups against his back because the woman had the tolerance of a fourteen-year-old. The temperature of the water was just barely scalding, just like she liked it. 

“Hey,” she’d said. “Courtney is coming to visit next weekend. I should have told you sooner. But she’s so flighty, I thought she was going to cancel.”

Jesse had shrugged, playing with the tiny fingers of her free hand. “Yo, that’s cool. We could take her out to Alfie’s, get her some fish and chips and a few local beers.”

“You’re okay with meeting her?”

He’d awkwardly craned his neck back enough to give her a kiss on the chin. “Of course.”

“Would it...would it be weird if I told her you were my boyfriend?”

Jesse couldn’t remember the last time that he wasn’t the first person in the relationship to bring up the whole ‘What are we?’ talk. Falling in love fast was kind of part of his lame M.O. or whatever. And this time wasn’t any different, except he really hadn’t wanted to freak Lorea out. 

He could tell she was just buzzed, not even tipsy. So having this conversation now didn’t feel inappropriate or anything. 

“It wouldn’t be weird at all. That is...if you want to be my girlfriend for real? Like not just in front of Courtney.”

“John, I’ve never wanted anything more.”

It still threw Jesse hearing his fake name, but it was starting to get more normal. 

“You really gotta raise your standards, Lorae,” he’d said. 

He was joking mostly, but she’d stroked his shoulder like she knew he liked. He had just added even more hot water from the tap not too long ago, almost too hot, but it felt good when she rubbed a scorching washcloth down his chest. 

“You really need to get a better mirror. If you wanted, you could be...like sleeping with half of Alaska.”

Jesse had rolled his eyes even though she couldn’t see him. While his scars were way better on his face, he wasn’t gonna be on the cover of GQ or some shit anytime soon. Lorae looked at him sometimes like she thought he could. She was usually pretty easy to read, especially for a chick. 

Like right then, when she pressed into his back more, chest all bony but nice and balmy against his skin, he knew something was up.

“What?” he’d said.

“There’s one other thing.” She’d hiccupped again even as she took another slug of wine. “Would it...be okay if I told Courtney I lived with you? I know it’s dumb to be embarrassed. But, if she sees my apartment she’ll just be all ‘Why do you live in this dump?’ and ‘Why can’t you come back to Dallas if your business is all online?’ and ‘Why couldn’t you have moved somewhere closer like New Mexico like you’d wanted?’”

Jesse had felt like he’d just tried to swallow his bar of soap whole.

“You wanted to move to New Mexico? That’s...a lot different than Alaska.” Everything in him had been screaming at him to shut up. “What made you change your mind?”

Her fingers had been shaking when she’d leaned over to set her wine glass down on the floor, body heat escaping between the two of them with the movement. She got quiet for a minute or two. 

“I had gone to Albuquerque when I was little for a few vacations and I remembered liking the feel of it for some reason. But, when I tried looking into stuff after my dad died, you know, stuff like the economy and housing market and that kind of thing...well, all that kept coming up was...this huge...scandal: cartel ties, man hunt, state-wide meth-bust. It was about drugs and I didn’t need anymore of that. I still wanted to move. So, I picked somewhere as far as I could go. I’d always wanted to go to Alaska.”

Jesse had sworn he could feel a panic attack coming on just seconds before she wrapped her arms around him: small and soapy but strong too. Her left hand was heavy, slick and practically suctioned against his chest right above his heart, like where Wendy laid her head down when shit got bad for him. Maybe he was pretty easy to read too. 

And maybe the way she’d been so wary around him at the store in the beginning made more sense. Jesse knew his picture must have come up in those search results. And he knew she wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t until then that he’d realized she was even less naive then he’d thought.

“You know you sleep over here more than your own place. And no offense, but your apartment is kind of a dump. Do you want to move in with me for real?”

“Seriously? Are...you sure?” she’d said. When Jesse nodded, she’d kissed that tender spot on the back of his neck she knew was extra sensitive. “Yes.”

He’d felt his pulse even out as he absently thumbed her knee just below the surface of the water.

“Yo, would it be cool if I said I love you?”

She’d kissed him again. “I love you too. So much.”

Jesse would have been lying if he said he hadn’t cried a little.

The toaster-oven timer dinged, and Jesse took out two plates. He felt a kiss on the back of his neck.

“Merry Christmas,” Lorae said.

He turned and kissed her around a satisfied hum. “Merry Christmas.”

“You warmed up breakfast?”

“Of course,” he said.

Really it had been more of a snack for himself, but that was only because he wasn’t expecting her to be up so soon. She still had bedhead, looking all flushed and cute in her gingerbread onesie-pajama-thing. She’d been living with him for almost six months now, and he still hadn’t gotten over how much he looked forward to waking up with her in their house. 

He watched her bend down to pet Wendy and thought about how she didn’t know about the woman who had been in his life, the friend, who had inspired the name. She still only acted like his name had always been John. They’d never even vaguely brought anything up again after that bubble bath. She never asked him about the scars on his back or around his hips. And he didn’t talk about the light pink, mostly healed, pin-straight welts on her upper thighs or the ones on the inside of her left wrist. They’d both been through some shit. That didn’t seem to matter.

“Did you sleep well?” she said.

Last night, they’d binged on Christmas movies, baked and iced sugar cookies, and drove around to look at lights. He’d fallen asleep with Wendy snoring at the foot of the bed and his arm draped across Lorae. 

“Yeah, real well. What about you? Did I wake you up this morning making coffee?”

Lorae shook her head and smiled and went all into this muffin recipe with cinnamon and apple sauce and peaches that she’d dreamed about. She served them both breakfast before they walked into the living room. She sat on the warm patch of rug in front of the wood-stove and was just as excited explaining her new creation as he’d get over an idea for like a cool bookshelf or something. 

And he sat down next to her and laughed, happy to be surrounded in a fucking indoor forest of Christmas trees.

‘Cause maybe Jesse Pinkman wasn’t some Christmas Tarzan, sappy holiday little bitch. But John Driscoll was sure as hell one. And he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 


End file.
